As I waited, I heard my name paged over the intercom at the same time my pager started beeping in my pocket.
“Dr. Ashworth, you are needed in OR four, stat.”
I took off down the hall and punched in the second floor where the surgery bays were located.
I ran toward the surgery desk. “I’m Dr. Ashworth. I had a page.”
“Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re here.” The surgical administrative attendant looked panicked, and I began to wonder if it was a member of her family that had the emergency.
“What happened? What’s going on?” I asked.
Tears welled in her eyes. “It’s Wes Blakefield.”
I blinked. I knew I was bad at names, but if this one was supposed to mean something, I was really screwed.
“You know, the quarterback for the San Antonio Wranglers? The Wes Blakefield.”
I stared dumbly. “Yes, of course. What’s the emergency?” I still had no idea who he was other than that he was an athlete.
A nurse tapped me on the shoulder. “Dr. Ashworth, come with me. We’re prepping him for surgery for you.”
I shook my head. These people were acting like the president was in here. I hadn’t even examined the patient or seen a chart or a damn x-ray.
I put up my hands. “Everyone needs to take a deep breath and slow down. I need some information before I perform any surgery.” I walked with the nurse down the hall and through the door next to the operating room.
“Here.” She flipped on the lights, projecting an x-ray onto the screen.
I looked at the hand. There were two bones distinctly out of place, and as I stepped closer, I could see a small hairline fracture on a third.
“Where did these come from?” I asked.
The resolution was perfect. Our equipment was excellent, but I’d never seen scans so clear.
“The Wranglers sent them with him,” she answered.
“And why is this an emergency?” I questioned her. Sure, it was an uncomfortable injury, but standard procedure would be to discuss options with the patient, book an OR, and then perform surgery.
“The playoffs. This is Wes Blakefield’s right hand.” She looked at me as if I were supposed to realize the significance, which I did not. “His throwing hand.”
“So?” I crossed my arms. “I can see that it’s a right hand.”
“The Super Bowl,” she emphasized. “This may be the Wranglers’ only chance. You have to repair his hand and get him back on the field immediately.”
“But I haven’t even spoken to him. And it’s not my job to help him reinjure himself. He’s going to have to heal after this. He’ll need rehab, physical therapy.”
“We already prepped him. He said to do whatever it takes. The coach says the same thing.” She stared at me, then whispered. “He’s here in the waiting room. Coach Howell.”
“Good Lord.” I threw my hands in the air. “This is not the Pope or the Queen. It’s a quarterback? You all are acting like lunatics over a quarterback?”
“He’s the quarterback, Dr. Ashworth. And you’re the best surgeon. He wanted the best. The Wranglers wanted the best.”
I smiled at that, but the Wranglers meant nothing to me. When I lived in D.C., I knew Ben loved to watch the Sharks play football, but I never got into it. I couldn’t name a single player. To be honest, I had forgotten San Antonio even had a team. All of this meant nothing to me.
“I guess I should at least speak to the coach before I go in there. Any other relatives? Next of kin present?”
The nurse shook her head. “No, but they’re anxious for you to get started.”
“Well, they’re going to have to wait a minute. I’m not going into surgery rushed like this for a non-emergency. Let me take a breath.” My heart was racing as if this was a life or death situation. I needed to calm the environment around me.
I brushed past her and walked toward the waiting room. It wasn’t hard to recognize the coach. He was wearing a visor and a polo. He had an athletic look about him, even with a paunch belly.
“Coach?”
“Are you the surgeon?” He looked at me skeptically.
“Yes, I am. I have had a chance to review Mr. Blakefield’s x-rays and it looks like it will be a rather simple surgery.”
He scowled. “There’s nothing simple about putting my star quarterback under the knife.”
“I can understand your hesitation. But I assure you, I’ve performed this same type of procedure before and I expect it will be fairly smooth.”
“When can he play again?”
I stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“Play. When can I get him back in practice?”
“He has a fracture that will have to heal on its own, and moving bones back into place is going to also add to the healing process. I’d say with physical therapy and cooperation from the patient, he’s probably looking at eight weeks. That’s optimistic.”
“Eight weeks! We don’t have eight damn weeks.” The man’s cheeks turned bright red, and for an instant, I thought he might pick up one of the expired magazines and throw it across the room.
“Maybe it would help if you told me how the injury happened.” I still didn’t have any details after I was whisked from the fourth floor.
“We were running drills this morning. The boys had a rough night last night, so I was throwing it at them a little hard.” He hung his head. “Anyway, Wes slipped and the line ran right over him. Complete accident, but one of the cleats crunched his hand. Freak thing to happen in practice.”
“I see.”
The coach continued. “We knew when Wes stood up holding his wrist that it was serious. We did the x-rays on-site at our facility.”
That explained why some of the procedures had been completed before I was paged.
“Well, Coach Howell, I think he’s ready for surgery. I’ll give you an update as soon as we’re finished. Try not to worry. The good news is his life isn’t at stake, and he’s going to make a full recovery.”
The coach turned toward me. “Football is his life. If that hand isn’t better than it was before, you might as well kill him.” His eyes blazed right through me, and I felt a chill go down my spine.
“Like I said, I’ll let you know when he’s out.” I hurried out of the waiting room and headed to prep for surgery.
The nurses stopped whispering when I walked in the door. They were looking through the glass at the huge figure lying on the operating table. This entire scenario was absurd. It was a broken hand, for God’s sake. This wasn’t a triple-valve replacement. I sighed and started scrubbing in for the most important hand repair of my life.
3
Wes
I could hear a beeping sound next to my right ear that was driving me fucking nuts. My eyes opened to a dim hospital room. I tried to sit forward, but nausea slammed into me and I sunk into the pillow. Fuck.
I looked at my right arm, which was propped up by some sort of contraption. There was a tube running into my veins and a blood pressure cuff on my left arm that kept turning on every fifteen minutes.
My mouth felt dry and I licked my lips, looking for water.
It all came back to me. The Dean. The nurse. The bottle of scotch I drank. I closed my eyes.
I never should have stepped on the practice field still drunk, but it wasn’t like it was the first time I had done it. Half the team was still blitzed after last night.
I knew the snap was bad the instant I took it. I turned to try to recover it, lost my balance, and landed on my back. We were all so shit-faced no one had any balance. Canon came roaring over the line, and before he could stop, his cleats ran right over my hand. The instant I heard it, I knew what it was. A break.
The practice field was as quiet as a church. The trainers rushed me into the facility and splayed my hand on a table to x-ray it. As soon as they saw it, I was slung into a car and dropped off in the operating room at San Antonio Mission Hospital, being prepped for emergency surgery. Coa
ch was with me the whole time.
Of all the fucking accidents to happen, why did it have to be my right hand?
There was a knock on the door and Coach walked in. He scratched the back of his head with his visor. “How you feelin’, Wes?”
“Could you hand me that water?”
The pitcher was on a cart too far for me to reach. He poured a cup full and placed it in my left hand.
“Thanks.” I took a sip, feeling the nausea subside.
“Surgery went well.” He rocked back on his heels. “The doc’s coming in to talk to you about the prognosis, and then our trainers will be in to come up with a plan. We’ll figure this out. We’re all behind you.”
“Good.” I nodded. “I want to get back on the field as soon as I can. I can throw with my left if I need to.” I tried to laugh, but my head was fuzzy, and moving my right shoulder shot pain all the way down to my fingertips.
“We know you do.” He tapped the footboard on the hospital bed. “Get some rest and we’ll talk strategy tomorrow.”
I finished off the water and reached for the remote. A broken hand wouldn’t take that long to heal. I knew the drill. I’d take some extra meds. The trainers could pump me up with whatever I needed to make it through the games, we could make it to the Super Bowl, and I’d heal in the off-season. This was a standard injury. Nothing more.
The immediate gut-wrenching feeling I had when I woke up started to evaporate as I convinced myself this wouldn’t be a setback. I might miss one game. Only one. And then the Wranglers would have me back after the bye week. That gave me two weeks to recover enough to play.
I flipped through the channels, landing on Sports Now. I read the ticker, expecting to see my name on the scroll as one of the headlines. Maybe since the injury had occurred at practice, the Wranglers had managed to keep it away from the press. None of us wanted this getting out.
I listened to the talking heads discuss the playoff possibilities. We were one of the teams on the cusp of breaking in. I rolled my eyes at the discussion. The Wranglers were going. I didn’t need to hear these idiots debate how good my team was.
“Knock, knock. Mr. Blakefield, how are you feeling?”
I looked over from the TV. Suddenly, I felt a whole let better. There was a gorgeous woman circling the bed, walking toward my injured hand. She had long blond hair pulled back, but tiny wisps floated around her face. Her blue eyes were striking.
“I’m Dr. Ashworth.” She smiled, showing off luscious pink lips.
I knew what this was. This was the guys’ way of trying to cheer me up. They knew how much I liked the nurse getup last night. They probably heard it through the suite door. It wasn’t like I held anything back when I fucked a woman. They had sent me an upgraded version to cheer me up after my surgery.
“Doc, is it?” I teased.
“Mmmhmm. I performed the surgery on your hand. I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet ahead of time. You were already prepped by the time I got to the OR.”
Most strippers wore more revealing clothes, but maybe in the hospital, she had to cover up a bit more. Maybe underneath that white coat, she was one gorgeous naked woman. I was limited to what I could do, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do a little something to make me feel better.
“How’s the pain?” she asked.
I played along with her charade. “It could be better.”
She twisted those full lips together. “I can probably help you with that.”
I smiled. It was exactly what I was thinking. The perfect distraction to get my mind off my damn hand. I could already feel myself getting hard. She was beautiful. High cheekbones and the cutest damn nose I had seen on a woman. My dick stiffened as I pictured her lowering herself on me. I didn’t realize I’d had a fantasy of getting sucked off in a hospital until she walked in.
“Are you going to lock the door?” I asked.
“It’s not going to take long. I don’t think anyone will interrupt the exam.”
“If you say so.” I grinned. God, this was going to be one hell of a story to tell the guys—how I got off right after surgery to a sex kitten in a doctor’s costume.
She made a note on the clipboard she was carrying, then placed it on the table next to the bed. “I think I’ll take a look.”
“What if I help you out?” I pulled back the sheet and gown, showing her how hard and ready I was for her mouth.
She jumped back. “What are you doing?”
“I know the guys got you for me. And I have to say, they’ve stepped up their game. You’re fucking sexy as hell.”
She blinked in horror. “You think I’m a hooker?” Her eyes hardened in a straight line, and I thought the cobalt shade might have fired amber a few times.
“Aren’t you?” I looked her up and down again. She was drop-dead gorgeous, and as hard as my dick was, she must have realized I thought so.
She glared at me. “No. I’m your surgeon.” Her hands were on her hips.
“So no blow job?”
“Oh my God! No, no blow job.”
I covered myself back up, but my current situation pitched a tent under the sheet.
“That’s a shame. Those pretty little lips would—”
She put her hand up. “Stop. Stop right there. I am your doctor, not a rent-a-whore.”
I chuckled. “Don’t see why you couldn’t be both.”
She inhaled slowly, and I could see the color deepen in her cheeks. I had pissed her off royally. “I can put you in the hands of one of our other doctors.” She picked up the clipboard. “I am a trained surgeon. I don’t have to put up with shit like this, even if you do play for some team.” She turned for the door.
“Some team?”
“Yeah, apparently, I’m the only one in this hospital who doesn’t know who you are or what it is you do for a living that involves playing with a ball. Although after that stunt, I’m starting to get a better picture of what kind of man you are.”
This was a first. “You don’t know who I am? You’ve never heard of Wes Blakefield? You expect me to believe that?”
“Seeing you on the operating table was the first time I’d laid eyes on you, Mr. Blakefield. And this is the last time.” Her hand was on the door.
“Wait, Doc. Wait.” I don’t know what made me do it. Hell, I could have let her walk out pissed and fired up. But I didn’t want to. She hadn’t even looked at my hand. And she was the most fucking beautiful woman I’d seen.
She breathed heavily. “What?”
“Aren’t you even going to look at my hand before you leave? If you’re the one who performed the surgery, I’d like you to take a look. They told me you were the best.”
I could see her debating whether it was worth it to give me another chance. She paused in front of the door.
“I’ll check it this once, and then I’m handing you off to Dr. Evans. And you should know he’s very old and has a really huge mustache,” she huffed.
I laughed. “That’s fair.”
She rolled her eyes. “And he has bad breath.” As if that jab would put me in my place.
I watched as she gently pulled back the bandage and looked at my hand. It was set in a foam mold so that my fingers were aligned an equal distance apart. She tilted her head from side to side, examining each finger. A curl of hair slipped from behind her ear.
“I think for a post-surgery hand, it looks exactly like it should.” She stood back, holding the clipboard tightly to her chest.
“That’s good news.”
“It is. I’ll let Dr. Evans know what to look for during your recovery. And I understand your team trainers want to be involved.”
“They always are.”
I didn’t want her to hand me over to some old, decaying bastard. I wanted her to be my doctor. I wanted her leaning over my body. Her inspecting my skin. Her advice on how to recover.
“Look, Doc, I’m sorry about earlier. That was out of line. I shouldn’t have assumed you were a stripper.”
I shook my head. “Can we chalk it up to me still being under the influence of whatever drugs you gave me?”
“You seem pretty alert, Mr. Blakefield.”
“Come on, give me another chance. I’ll be a model patient. I’ll even pretend I didn’t look down your dress.” I flashed a wicked smile.
She blushed, pulling her white coat closer to her chest, knocking her stethoscope to the side. I liked that I was affecting her somehow. It was a distraction from the beeping and the lines running into my arm. She was the sexiest distraction I could have wished for.
“I’ll check in on you in the morning.” She walked toward the door, looking over her shoulder. “Have a good night.”
“Hey, Doc, before you leave…”
“Yes?”
“Do you have a first name?”
She paused. “It’s Lennon. But my patients call me Dr. Ashworth.”
“So does that mean I should call you Dr. Ashworth or Lennon?” I taunted. I liked her name. I’d never heard it before. It seemed to fit her—strong and beautiful. She wore brains and sex appeal well.
I grinned as I watched her leave. I should have been feeling a whole lot worse than I was, but something about Dr. Ashworth was like a dose of good medicine.
4
Lennon
I held on to the counter at the nurses’ station, knowing my knees were knocking together and my legs were barely holding me up. I was furious. Livid. I’d never been so insulted in my professional life in such a degrading way. What was more messed up was that I was so turned on by that asshole, I could barely hold myself together. He had managed to insult me and flirt with me at the same time. He was infuriating.
I hadn’t bothered to look at his face during surgery. Most of it had been covered with a cap, and I was so rushed to get in and repair his hand quickly that I never thought to see what he looked like.
Most of my patients came out of surgery looking pale and listless. They didn’t react well to the anesthesia. Some could barely talk, let alone string together coherent sentences. But not this man.
Beauty and the Billionaire Bad*ss Page 16
